Tuesday, September 17, 2013

tablet of the roving artist

Making progress here. I find my tablet useful when I get an idea and can jot it down in text and in picture and in drawing. I want to explain why computer science is a science. The concept is very simple for a user. Follow the exact instructions and get repeatable results. That's it!! Works the same way every time. It's a recipe, no guessing, measure, stir, put in pan and bake, eat it.

One thing I needed to do was transfer a drawing made on my laptop to my tablet and vice-versa. First the transfer, a cloud app called "Dropbox" is handy. I get 2 years of use free. I load the app on laptop and tablet and share the cloud storage, who knows where the server is, but it works great. I could also use a flash drive.

Then the file format. On the laptop Gimp can import, export, save as, etc. On the tablet there is Photoshop Touch and Autodesk Sketchbook and ArtFlow which can import, export in a number of formats. So far I've transfered pictures but not with layers intact. I can work around that but I will read the instructions (RTFM) to see if I can transfer pictures with layers intact.

I should know how to do this, you know how guys are. I put my flexible ego down, pick up the instructions and step by step do it as prescribed. It hurts like hell. I have flashbacks of my old supervisor who said to me "you don't know a darn thing about this job, I am here to train you." The job wasn't that hard or complicated, but instead of schooling him on not bruising my sensibilities, I let him train me (his work-flow), hurt like hell. I got good enough (of course) to invent my own ways of doing things (my work-flow). In the Linux community there is a phrase RTFM which means "read the &#@&* manual". Linux folks are used to reading stuff then doing stuff (after first trying blindly and screwing up everything), so RTFM is a word to the wise. It is also perceived as a forum curse word.

Hey there's a Google app called Voice Search, I just tried. It links to your microphone and to your Google browser. You speak what you want and Voice Search finds it. It works but don't slurrr-yrrr-werds or you'll get strange results.

Well let me go, lots of playing around to do. And I have some projects in mind for you digital artist in the Lorain Ohio area. I want to start an interest group of digital enhanced artists, mostly local. Then maybe an African consciousness book reading and discussion group also local. I'm pretty open but Lorain is lacking in black cultural exercise. This is weird for an area known as Station 100 of the Underground Railroad. (We haven't fully escaped yet and fading away.)

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